Security in Wireless LAN - Essay Example

are some of the well known access points. Antenna: It determines the reach of the WLAN. It is basically a transceiver i.e. receiving as well as transmitting the signals. Antenna takes directions from the wireless network interface card of the computer. Laptop/ Desktop systems: Since WLAN is basically designed for mobility, therefore Laptop happens to be the best companion to work with the help of network. The laptop must be having a wireless network interface PCMCIA card for WLAN compatible. Wireless network interface cards work with a 48-bit MAC address associated with them.

This address is completely unique to each card. Security settings: For a low end access point, security is generally limited to using WEP encryption technique and MAC address filters. MAC address filtering is used to limit the number of hardware components that can access the wireless network. For a higher end transmitter, like used for a corporate set-up Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) is used. This offers better security than WEP. TKIP offers new encryption algorithms every now and then, and keeps changing the encryption keys making it more difficult for a network hacker to sniff them.